The Orphan's Daughter

by Jan Cherubin

  “Let me finish my story,” my mother said. “So, I was still up on the porch with a pretty good view. I’d be able to see Clyde coming home from the library from more than a block away. ‘No. Not George Goldsmith,’ I said. ‘I never saw George at the Elk’s Lodge,’ I told the FBI men. I remember switching Susan from one hip to the other. She was getting heavy.

  “‘But you know Goldsmith?’ he said.

  “‘Yes.’

  “‘Through your political activities?’ he said.

  “‘No.’

  “‘Then how did you meet George Goldsmith?’

  “‘I don’t remember,’ I said. ‘This is a small community—this corner of Baltimore. Everybody knows everybody.’

  “‘Huh. Everybody knows everybody. But no one remembers anyone’s name?’

  “‘It’s been a long time,’ I said. ‘So, no. I don’t remember anyone’s name or how I met George Goldsmith.’

  “I sized up the three agents. Cold, smug, and bored. They could not begin to understand how alive I was during the war, how urgent and meaningful my life was thanks to the CP. How engaged I was with the world. I missed those days. I still miss those days. That was my youth. And then he starts with this anti-Semitic insinuation. ‘This small community, this corner you speak of . . .’ he says, ‘you’re talking about the northwest corner of Baltimore, isn’t that right?’

  “‘I guess that’s what I mean,’ I said.

  “‘You mean the Jewish section?’

  “‘Yes,’ I said. ‘The Jewish section. That’s where I live. I’m Jewish. That’s not against the law, I hope.’

  “‘There’s no need to get testy, ma’am,’ he said.

  “‘It’s just—what did we win the war for?’ I said. I was dangerously prolonging the interview. I needed them gone—Clyde would be back any second.”

  “So why get into it with them?” Brenda said. “That seems sort of stupid, if you don’t mind my saying.”

  “It wasn’t stupid. Not really. I had a point to make. You see, Brenda, in a very meaningful way I wanted them there, because they had come to interview me. They hadn’t come for Clyde. I was the important one for once. I was the one in a leadership position at the Young Communist League. I was the one who worked to get FDR re-elected. Yes, Clyde was off fighting the war, but goddamnit, I represented our YCL chapter at the CIO convention in Philadelphia. This was my moment. I was proud of the work I’d done. So yeah, Brenda, I got into it. ‘If I have to be worried about being Jewish and having Jewish friends,’ I said to that asshole, ‘then what did we win the war for?’

  “‘We won the war to triumph over fascism, ma’am,’ he says, utterly without irony.

  “I just shook my head at the obtuseness. But he isn’t finished. He asks if I’ve been to any political meetings lately and he’s waiting for an answer. ‘Ma’am?’ he says. Always so courteous with the ma’ams. Meanwhile, I’ve got my eye on Calloway Street when a brown fedora pops up, bobbing above the privet hedge. The stride is unmistakable. It’s Clyde. You know—head jutting forward, always looking for action. Slow down, I’m begging him. He’s almost at the corner.

  “‘Mrs. Aronson? Do you still attend political meetings? May Day parades?’

  “Clyde’s about to turn left onto Liberty Heights. If he gets to the house, he’ll be questioned, and investigated. A teacher poisoning young minds. I couldn’t afford to play a game of wits any longer, I had to start playing dumb, and I knew how to do that, too. Every woman does. Right, Brenda? So I quickly change tactics. I get buttery sweet. ‘Oh no, I wouldn’t go to political meetings anymore,’ I say, arching my back, sticking my chest out. I was amazed how quickly the men responded to that, shifting in their suits. ‘I’m a mother now, after all,’ I cooed. Just like the mother you burned in the electric chair, I’m thinking. Of course, I was nothing like Ethel Rosenberg – she was brave, or foolish, or both, and refused to play dumb.

  “The FBI man gives me this condescending smile. ‘I can see you have much more important things on your mind now,’ he says, with a nod to Susan.

  “I was probably visible on the porch from far down the street, but I wasn’t sure if Clyde saw me. I doubted he’d be able to see the men. I watched him pause at the corner. ‘Is that all?’ I said. I was finished now and begging the men silently: Go. Leave.

  “Clyde turns the corner, but instead of left, he goes right on Liberty Heights and walks away from me and my interrogators. I let out a breath. He has books under one arm and something white in his other hand—an envelope. He turned right not because he saw the men, but because, as luck would have it, he had to mail a letter at the mailbox on the next corner.

  “‘That’s all,’ the stocky one says. ‘Thank you. We appreciate your time, Mrs. Aronson.’

  “He tips his hat and turns to leave with the other two just as Clyde pulls on the blue handle. The mailbox door creaks open and clanks shut. Clyde starts down the block toward us.

  “‘Wait,’ I say. ‘There’s one other thing.’”

  “You stopped them from leaving?” Brenda said. “You wanted Clyde to get in trouble?”

  “No, of course not. I had an idea. I decided to throw a diversion in their path. I don’t how I got the nerve, but let’s say I had a moment of brilliance. You see, if you signed the oath and you were seen at a meeting or a rally, something that small, they could indict you for perjury. If they questioned Clyde, he would be asked to betray his friends, name names, or lose his job—at the very least. That was the choice. It was such a great job. City was public, you know that, but it was as good as any prep school—such bright boys. And the faculty was terrific, so many parties. There I go again with the parties. What can I say? We had fun. It wasn’t my clubhouse, no, it definitely wasn’t 1019, these were Clyde’s colleagues, not mine. But when Tom Mulligan played guitar and Shep Levine played the banjo, what songs do you think they sang? Union songs, of course. There once was a union maid/she never was afraid/of goons and ginks and company finks. . . . We all sang, a little drunk. Oh you can’t scare me, I’m stickin’ to the union. We were full of life and hope for the future, the chance to bridge the gap between rich and poor, to make a difference in young people’s lives, not indoctrinate them, but open their minds. It might have seemed corny to outsiders, even naïve, but how else would progress come without that kind of innocence? Guilty of innocence, that’s what we were. Very few teachers were members of the Party like me, but many shared my ideals. They supported labor, civil rights, women’s rights, socialized medicine. I had the naïve urge to talk sense into the FBI men at my door. I’d rejected the Party line by then, but why throw the baby out with the bath water? In Europe, democracies put the good aspects of communism to use. In America, even socialism’s a dirty word.

  “I said none of this, of course. I’d already kept them too long, said too much. Someday, though, when Susan was in school, I thought, I’d fight the good fight again. But I was a practical person, too, and when I thought of Clyde losing his job, our sole paycheck, when I thought of the baby in my arms who was completely dependent on that paycheck . . .”

  “What was the one more thing?” asked Brenda.

  “That’s what the FBI wanted to know. ‘Ma’am? One other thing, you said?’

  “‘Please,’ I said. ‘I beg you. Please don’t tell my husband I was ever involved in anything political. If he knew, he would kill me!’”

  “Smart,” my father said.

  Brenda laughed. “Don’t throw me in the briar patch,” she said.

  “Exactly,” said my mother. “I don’t know how I thought of it on the spot. But it worked. An ingratiating smile bloomed on that guy’s face. ‘Oh, honey, is that what you’re worried about? Your husband finding out? Put it out of your mind, sweetheart. Your secret is safe with us.’

  “‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I’m so relieved. Because I’m serious, my husband would kill me.’

  “They left, got into their shiny, black car and drove away. ‘I saved your Da
ddy’s ass,’ I whispered into Susan’s tiny ear. ‘And you, my darling baby, you saved mine.’

  “Clyde was coming up the street and I knew he hadn’t seen the men, because he was singing in his raspy voice as he turned into our front walk, ‘Oh What a Beautiful Morning!’

  “‘Get anything for me?’ I asked, as I always did when he came home from the library.

  “‘You’re trembling, Evie,’ Clyde said. ‘What’s the matter?’

  “‘Here, take Susan. Come inside. I’ll tell you inside. Did you get anything for me?’ I asked again, to steady my voice.

  “‘Désirée,’ Clyde said. ‘Just came out. Should be good, my darling.’

  “Clyde reached for the baby and I took the library books and I led my family inside, locking the door behind us, and they followed me up to our apartment at the top of the stairs. I was pleased with myself. I felt smart and powerful for a while. But as the weeks passed, and the months and years, the feeling faded. The last laugh was on me. Shortly after that day, I agreed to move out of the city and into the suburbs, to this house. The ruse about Clyde being ignorant of my politics was a clever trick and I’m still proud of it. It worked. No one bothered Clyde or me after that. But the act I put on at the end, the little woman terrified of her husband and no longer with a political thought in her head—that wasn’t really an act, was it? It was true. I was merely a wife and mother. That’s all I had become, no threat to anyone, no power in the world.”

  My mother stood up and gathered her bag and keys from the buffet. “But no, Brenda, since you asked, I didn’t hate it here,” she said. “Sure, I have plenty of regrets, but this was my home. This is where I raised my family.”

  “Don’t go, Evie,” my father said.

  “It’s late,” my mother said. She let herself out through the kitchen door.

  CHAPTER 12

  Tuckahoe

  I met Evie in 1942. It was very romantic with the war on. I left the HNOH at seventeen, and I’d been on the outside for a while already—four years living with my mother in the Bronx and four years on my own—when I went down to Baltimore for radio school. I was hoping a radio technician’s degree would get me into the Army Signal Corps, so I headed south and rented a room in one of those Baltimore row houses with the marble steps. My landlords, the Bravermans, were Yiddish-speaking shopkeepers who took in boarders to help put their son through medical school.

  The first few days were terribly lonely. I was no longer a little boy in a row of iron cots, but I felt the same heartache. I had lived by myself off and on and that was swell, but this was different. I was among strangers. At breakfast the first morning, I met the son, Nat, who barely looked up from his newspaper. I cleared my throat. “I’m sure glad this coffee’s strong, because I’m gonna need it. Today is my first day of school.” I spoke with childish enthusiasm, an attempt at humor. “At 25 years old, I should be out of school by now,” I said.

  Nat put down the newspaper. “What school?” he said.

  “Radio technician’s school. They hold their classes over at Boy’s Tech.”

  “No kidding? Boy’s Tech?” Nat said. “I’m at Johns Hopkins.”

  Heat spread up my neck the second the little shit opened his mouth. “Very nice,” I said.

  “I study a lot,” said Nat. “So I ask boarders to keep noise to a minimum.” He wiped his mouth and got up to leave the table. “Good luck at radio school.”

  Right away, I started sleeping with the daughter. Shirley was about as sharp as a marble, but fairly companionable. Mr. and Mrs. Braverman seemed oblivious, but I liked pissing off their son the doctor. Then I met the little sister, who’d been away at the shore. I had just heard the news about the Nazis goose-stepping into the Nile Delta, and my thoughts had been somber riding the streetcar back to the Bravermans. As soon as I let myself in the front door, wild shrieks and bursts of laughter rang out, shattering the normally quiet household. Footsteps pounded overhead. A door slammed. I joined Shirley in the living room. She said her sister was back. The radio was on, an Emerson in a walnut cabinet I admired.

  “How many tubes does this thing have?” I asked.

  “How would I know?” said Shirley. Her lousy mood had nothing to do with the Nazis. It was the secretarial-pool supervisor who chewed her out for being five minutes late. The stairs creaked and I glanced up to see a girl coming down in a skirt and blouse, bobby sox and saddle shoes, chestnut hair tumbling over her shoulders.

  “This is my sister, Evie,” Shirley said.

  The sister swayed to the swing orchestra on the radio, then caught herself when she saw me, and laughed. It was hard to tell her age. She had the bright eyes and glowing skin of a child, while nicely filling out her blouse. “So you’re the new boarder. Do you like candy?” she said.

  “What are you, crazy?” I said. “Who doesn’t like candy?”

  “Wait here.” She bounded up the stairs, and then clomped down again holding a small white box. “Salt water taffy? St. James. From the boardwalk in Atlantic City.”

  “Why, thank you, Evy.” I picked strawberry and put it in my jacket pocket for later.

  “Not Evy.“ She scowled. “My name is not short for Evelyn. It’s pronounced Ee-vie with a long “e.” Evie is the diminutive of Eve.”

  “Ah. The diminutive of Eve. So where have you been, Eevie?”

  “Atlantic City, where do you think?”

  “Right,” I said. “Hence, the salt water taffy.”

  “Are you British?”

  “I hail from New York City. The Bronx.”

  “I think you use British expressions to hide your Bronx accent,” she said.

  “Really? Is that so?” I couldn’t believe how frank this smart-aleck girl was. “Who are you, Sigmund Freud?”

  “Leave her alone,” said Shirley. “She’s just a kid.”

  “I’m not a kid, Shirley. I’m sixteen.”

  “Sixteen. Very grown up,” I said. “I like your bobby sox.”

  Evie looked down at her white socks and then up at me. Her cheeks flushed. “They’re not bobby sox,” she said quietly. “They’re anklets.”

  Ordinarily, Shirley was an indoor type, but egged on by Evie she agreed to a double date biking in Druid Hill Park. Evie’s date Bernard was home for the weekend, from Princeton, no less. We cycled along the winding lanes toward the botanical gardens and parked our bicycles under a tree. I watched Evie run ahead in white shorts, her long legs making great strides as she led us to the conservatory. Shirley plodded heavily up the hill, while I fought the urge to leave her behind, and Bernard, too. “When I’m old enough,” Evie said when we caught up, “if the war’s still on, which I hope it won’t be of course, I’m joining the WACs.”

  “You’re kidding,” Shirley said.

  “I’m not kidding. I want to see the world, fight the fascists. Why should I be left out because I’m a girl? I would have gone to Spain with the Lincoln Brigade if I’d been older.”

  “I wanted to go to Spain, too,” I said.

  “Why didn’t you?” said Shirley.

  “Yeah, you’re the right age and you’re male,” said Evie. “What was your excuse?”

  “Christ, you’re so direct,” I said. Her words stung, but I tried not to be thin-skinned. “My excuse?” I said calmly. “I’d just left the orphanage, come home to live with my mother and support my family.” I noticed they weren’t criticizing Bernard for his college deferment.

  “I’m sorry,” said Evie. “That’s a valid reason.”

  “Thanks for the reprieve,” I said. “It’s a valid reason, but hardly romantic.”

  “Romantic? You Clyde? I thought you were the big realist,” said Shirley.

  “You’re a realist? You don’t say,” said Bernard.

  “I’m a realist about men and women,” I said. “The romance of politics is another story.”

  “Clyde doesn’t believe in love,” said Shirley.

  “I couldn’t agree more,” said Evie.

 
“She gets that from her Communist club,” Shirley said.

  “What, Evie? You don’t believe in love and romance?” said Bernard.

  “The girls at school make me sick with their swooning and childish fantasies,” Evie said. She kicked a pile of leaves into the air. “I’ve read Karl Marx. A wife is property. When a woman marries she’s sold into slavery.”

  “Evie, relax,” said Bernard.

  “I don’t want to relax,” she said.

  I continued my affair with Shirley, but when I was done with class in the afternoons, I entered the house with only Evie on my mind. My body thrummed but I kept the volume low so I could hear Evie’s voice in the kitchen or on the second floor by the radio or the third floor where, due to unbelievable luck or possibly divine intervention, both Evie and I had our sleeping quarters. If I didn’t hear her when I came in, I went straight up to my room, stretched out on my bed, and waited for the door to open, the house filling with Evie’s warmth and laughter, her step on the stairs. Sometimes she’d knock and come into my room with a question about homework. Was Walt Whitman a transcendentalist? Could I help her locate Singapore on the map?”

  “Singapore? You bet.” I leapt to her side.

  “Thanks,” she said, holding open an atlas, offering the world.

  My cheek grazed the top of her head and I inhaled her perfumed hair and tried to peer down her blouse, but she had it buttoned to a triangle of porcelain skin. Still I throbbed. I pointed to the Malay Peninsula. “I had a lady teacher who also didn’t know where Singapore was,” I said.

  “You must think women are really dumb.” She clapped the atlas shut.

  I withdrew a finger. “Au contraire,” I said, cradling my wounded hand. “I adore women. I worship them.”

  “We don’t want to be worshipped.”

  “No? What do you want?”

  She tilted her head and her eyelids fluttered. I imagined her looking inward. Seconds passed. “I want to be known,” she said. “And understood.”

  I let seconds pass on my side. “Don’t we all,” I said.

  At first I didn’t give great importance to what was happening. It was a game, a fantasy. The usual lust for a young girl. But then I started to notice when Evie wasn’t home I was truly miserable, and when she was there I was happy. I continued my affair with her older sister, uncertain of whether I was a louse for doing so, or a prince for sparing Shirley’s feelings.